Planning for the future in El Monte and Pasadena: Editorial

André Quintero, Mayor of El Monte, thanks those that have been involved in the Gateway Project, during the groundbreaking of the Gateway Project, a transit-oriented, multi-phase, mixed-use development near the El Monte Bus Station in El Monte, CA., Thursday, February 27, 2014. The development will include 485 units of housing, 132 of which will be affordable, and 25,000 square feet of retail spread throughout the 14.31 acre site. The one- to three-bedroom apartments will range in size from 550 to 1,050 square feet. (Photo by James Carbone for the San Gabriel Valley Tribune) ¬

A post-recession building boom has finally hit El Monte and Pasadena, the two biggest cities in the San Gabriel Valley.

Well, a mini-boom — skyscrapers along the 10 Freeway or real skyscrapers along Colorado Boulevard are not precisely in the picture.

But, as our Rebecca Kimitch recently reported, El Monte’s Planning Commission had on its agenda this week a look at proposals for a 133-room hotel, and will review a 62,000-square-foot commercial building later this month and a proposed outlet mall by the end of the year. In fact, there are some $750 million in projects that could be built in the next five years, the city’s development department says.

Anyone who has followed development politics and realities in El Monte in recent decades knows, however, that the best-laid plans sometimes fall through. That was certainly the case with the El Monte Gateway mixed-use project, plagued by a decade of delays even after a $15 million state grant and a large handful of private developers coming in and going away. Even the eight-acre Gateway, mixing housing and commercial uses, though, has finally broken ground.

The planning issue in the city now is more political than developmental. Of all city bodies other than the elected councils, none are more important to the fiscal success and the look of our local cities than our planning commissions, and none are more powerful. That makes the proper appointment of the citizen members of these commissions very important.

In most every city in the San Gabriel Valley, those appointments are spread throughout the council members, with each one getting a pick. In Pasadena, for instance, a charter city, council members usually get one appointment and the citywide-elected mayor gets two. That seems like a pretty fair approach. But it turns out that in general-law cities — most of those in California — that have citywide-elected mayors, the mayor is allowed to make those appointments.

Wisely, in the name of consensus, other local charter cities with separate mayors, including Azusa and Baldwin Park, collectively vet and then vote on commissioners. It’s been done that way in El Monte as well — until now. Mayor Andre Quintero has taken that power back to himself with the two most recent Planning Commission appointments.

Because something is technically allowable does not mean it is the right thing to do. Quintero ought to go back to the politics of consensus out of respect for his colleagues.

Pasadena is seeing its own hotel boomlet, among other developments springing up. The renovated historical Constance on Colorado is about to open with its great Rose Parade views, and plans are in the works for big new hotels near PCC, in the Paseo Colorado and on the site of the former Pasadena Athletic Club at Walnut and Fair Oaks. The Pasadena Convention Center, which does a lot more business already than many locals know of, is relishing the plans for hundreds of more guest rooms in town.

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Across the street from the Walnut hotel, at the giant Parsons complex bordering Old Pasadena, the new property owners are proposing a huge new complex, where the surface parking lots are now, that would include new restaurant and retail space and 475 residential units. They’re terming it a “mixed-use urban village,” but the problem with preliminary plans is that they are too inward-looking and don’t include pedestrian-friendly storefronts along Fair Oaks and Union. But better planning can fix that!